It is unfortunate that you felt the need to temporary remove the tool and to then further escalate the situation by mothballing it; but maybe offer Elite Authors a substitue for the time being? unless the issue was actually entirely monetary related of course. The main concern is that this new pricing structure will not be available for over a year as milestones do not seem to be kept in regard to the themeforest (unforeseen issues ect).

As Mike Mcalister said earlier there has been a giant underlaying break down in communication over the last year and gargantuan delays in development progression; for instance it was advertised that the tool would be down for a short time and would then come back as soon as possible. There was no talk of issues (in the public domain) with the tool or any foresight indicating it may have to be removed permanently from what I have witnessed at least.

Icons and forum titles are lovely but they do not equate to a possible; thousands of dollars a month which some authors are currently earning from that extra $5. Hopefully authors did not forecast their income based on now to be false figures leading them to invest in things that they may deem poor ventures now (unless the items will retain their higher price until the new pricing structures).

There are always massive hurdles to be overcome and we all love the themeforest but isn’t it time to make it better instead of dithering?

JamiGibbs said
At first I was a little bummed to not have a chance at trying the price adjustment tool but after thinking about it:

A price increase on files deter some buyers. Maybe not all, but some. Increasing the price does nothing but add a few extra bucks for each sale which probably doesn’t compensate for the number of buyers who are turned off by the price in the first place.

Having that gorgeous Elite Author badge on items can only help improve the sales of the item. It really helps make an item stand out and I really love the idea!

Not necessarily. I raised the price of one of my themes that had already been out and steadily declining in sales for around 5 months. As soon as I raised it, my sales have increased every month for the past 5 months, not only in sales dollars but also in number of themes sold. This was a direct result of raising my price. I had no idea sales could be increasing each month a good 10 months after an item is released. So, needless to say, I really have a soft spot in my heart for the price adjustment tool

Maybe I’d feel different if I was an Elite author, but I won’t rush to judgement about getting rid of the price adjustment tool since there may well be a good reason for it with these future pricing changes. But now I’m very interested in what these new price changes will be. Like others have said, how soon is “soon”? I’d like to see a $10 increase across the board (even if $5 in six months then $5 in another six months).

The themes will all still be cheaper than anywhere else (for equal design quality, depth of features) so I don’t image that will turn people elsewhere (where would they go anyway, ThemeForest is bigger than all indy shops combined). It might reduce sales volume a bit, but with the price increase, would that affect the bottom line at all? A higher price sends a “this is quality” message to buyers anyway. And not only that, people spend $35 on a theme then turn around and charge $500 to the client. $45 is a drop in the bucket, still! In the end I think it’d mean no loss in income but less customers to support and therefore more time to design themes which translates into better quality and wider selection. And that translates into a more attractive marketplace for buyer$.

On the other points, I sure do like the idea of ratings with comments, Amazon style. If comments could be replaced by: pre-sales questions (public), written reviews with ratings (public) and a built-in support forum for each item (private), that would be great. Also, I think for top authors, the support system would need to allow privileged staff users to post responses, versus the author alone. The idea that buyers should have to go to a third party forum for adequate support is amateurish.

outerspice said
Not necessarily. I raised the price of one of my themes that had already been out and steadily declining in sales for around 5 months. As soon as I raised it, my sales have increased every month for the past 5 months, not only in sales dollars but also in number of themes sold. This was a direct result of raising my price. I had no idea sales could be increasing each month a good 10 months after an item is released. So, needless to say, I really have a soft spot in my heart for the price adjustment tool

Interesting. Thanks for sharing those details. I became an Elite Author yesterday so I never had an opportunity to test it out myself. So my theories were just that… theories. It would be great to see some solid stats on it though.

outerspice said
Not necessarily. I raised the price of one of my themes that had already been out and steadily declining in sales for around 5 months. As soon as I raised it, my sales have increased every month for the past 5 months, not only in sales dollars but also in number of themes sold. This was a direct result of raising my price. I had no idea sales could be increasing each month a good 10 months after an item is released. So, needless to say, I really have a soft spot in my heart for the price adjustment tool

Interesting. Thanks for sharing those details. I became an Elite Author yesterday so I never had an opportunity to test it out myself. So my theories were just that… theories. It would be great to see some solid stats on it though.

Agreed, I would love to hear if other people have experienced the same thing as I have. Congrats on Elite status, by the way!

VERY frustrating. Same goes for me, like you Jami – I became elite a few weeks ago or so and just before I was about to submit increase requests it went offline. I was going to raise prices on my 5 top selling items. It was going to be an amazing experiment because there is only one other Elite author on audiojungle and he has never used the tool. I would have easily been able to see how much customers were ready for the increase. I would have done the whole portfolio if I was able to as well.

The pricing on AJ is making me quite frustrated because I feel like I am almost giving music away vs what I can now get paid for it, but don’t want to pull items from my exclusive portfolio….unfortunately I have a bad feeling it will start happening soon because the offers (bids) to buy out music by larger corporate companies is increasing all the time – and the price point is so low on AJ that it is no longer competitive to leave it on my exclusive account over time to make more then the bids.

ThemesFever said
If they are going to improve product threads it should be for everyone and not just for elite authors …

You’ll get no disagreement out of me, I just figured this is as good a time as any to make another request for this (hence the poking)

If one of the reasons this has been delayed though is server impact, it might actually make sense to roll it out across a small sample of author accounts… still, the obvious problem here is a discontinuous UI on the site. Customers getting to search one thread and not another is confusing as all getout… but it’s definitely time to get the ball rolling on this one if it isn’t already. I get at least 2 comments a day requesting a search function that’s specific to one product.